Grand Canyon to Zion – Day 9: A zero on the North Rim

We go for a walk around the lodge and the shop, check the North Kaibab Trail from above and spend the rest of the afternoon in the general store. Drinking coffee and hot chocolate, eating chips, trying to catch the internet in the front left corner of the store (important info :cP ) and to make up our minds.

What do we do next? Bushwhack down Swamp Point? The Arizona Trail till Jacob Lake? The wave? Buckskin Gulch? Too many options. It snows and hails but inside the store it’s warm.

We make awesome burritos and then sleep while outside it rains. In the evening we’re back in the store, still trying to figure out where to go next. But answers never come inside in between 4 walls and a roof. Our feet will decide tomorrow!

My connection and relationship to the Grand Canyon has changed so much now I hiked down the Nankoweap Trail, bushwhacked along the Colorado River, hitched a raft across, forded the Little Colorado River, hiked the Beamer Trail, the Tanner Trail, the South and North Kaibab Trail. The layers are no longer just layers. Some were easy to walk on, some so damn slippery, some just sheer strength of will. When I look into the mirror of nature I find my own layers; the slippery ones, the tricky ones that break and crack easily, the smooth ones. Eventually I get to the bottom, where soul lives deep and Spirit soars high. It’s where I realize that we are all and all is in us. I am the stone, I am the river, I am the wind, I am the layers and the soul and the spirit. I may be tiny but I wholeheartedly believe in the power and the difference one single living being can make. Everything is connected! Everything is one!